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Uber posts $2.5 billion profit amid divestiture, joint venture

May 24, 2018

Human cloud, ride-sharing firm Uber announced revenue and posted a profit; the ride-sharing company also announced a new research hub in France and that it is shutting its autonomous vehicle tests in Arizona.

The company reported profit of $2.5 billion on gross bookings of $11.29 billion, MarketWatch and other media outlets reported. However, the company’s sale of GrabTaxi Holdings and a joint venture with Russian firm Yandex boosted revenue; the company posted losses of $577 million without those deals.

Reuters reported that Uber also plans a secondary stock sale for employees and existing investors that would value the company at $62 billion; the deal will likely close at the end of next month. Uber also cautioned not to expect profits soon as it reinvests money.

Uber also announced in a blog post yesterday that it’s planning an Advanced Technologies Center in France that will work on its Elevate program to build a network of electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically to transport people around cities. The France location is the company’s first outside of North America. It plans demonstration flights of the aircraft in Dallas, Los Angeles and a third city in 2020.

AZCentral.com reported Uber is shutting its autonomous vehicle tests in Arizona following the death of a pedestrian. Some 300 Arizona workers were being terminated, and the shutdown could take several weeks. The company plans ultimately to begin testing autonomous vehicles again in Pittsburgh and California.

The company also announced in a post that it would be providing drivers across Europe a range of insurance coverage for sickness, injury, and maternity and paternity payments. Drivers must have completed 150 trips in the previous eight weeks to qualify and Uber Eats couriers must have completed at least 30 deliveries in the previous eight weeks to qualify.